It’s interesting when a particular gesture gets so taken for granted by a certain culture that its absence is seen as unnatural.

ElfQuest managed a kiss-free environment that felt great because there was a ton of other touching (among lovers and among friends) that we don’t tend to have in our culture. Even like having two married couples sleeping in the same bed with their kids and all like it’s no big deal, taking comfort in the shared warmth of their bodies. (It also had the benefit of avoiding censorship/public outcry problems over the many homosexual relationships in the series.)

I think it was mentioned that for the Sarnothi here, pressing the hand to the head in one position or another is an intimate kiss-replacement gesture. But I forget where it was mentioned. I recall the direction of the gesture (palm to forehead or back of hand to forehead) determined level of intimacy.

Bless you Kilyle for referencing ElfQuest. Started reading them when I was 13, Wendy and Richard were still publishing out of their house. Your summation of that touch culture is well done.

Because my vision is made of suck and I have sensory processing issues, touch and scent became my go-to senses very young. I always touched way more than was considered normal for middle class white culture. Eventually found a tolerant community and the family I raised is more comfortable with touch than the one that raised me. Still we don’t kiss much. Strong affection we express with touch, hair stroking, leaning into one another, we are white, but my kids and grandchildren and I touch noses and foreheads(Maori hongi) rather than kiss. Touching each other’s ears with a gentle tug–big feels. This really works for us.

For the most part he uses the sarnothi equivalent of an intimate kiss, which would be cupping her forehead with the palm of his hand. (The gesture of lightly brushing the the forehead with knuckles is a not-intimate gesture, appropriate for showing affection without romance).

I guess I’ll be the one to bring up the subject: How would other forms of intimacy work? Judging by the anatomy sketch, the genitalia are similar to humans’; is it simply a “don’t… ingest” issue (think Turians) or are they physically incompatible? Heck, is it possible for a human to develop a tolerance for Sarnothi bodily fluids? (And do Sarnothi have a problem with human bodies?)

I get a similar impression.
With comments from Avery earlier, I’m getting very strong echoes of friends who are still recovering from trauma. She’s in a good place; loved, happy, safe and cared for, but she’s still uncertain and fragile.
Am I reading this right?

my guess would be that as a sar´teri her interactions with other sarnothis are tense to say the least….and it doesn´t help that selkie is a jin´sorai, the clan damn near wiped out by the sar´teri. still, she´s just as much a refugee then every other sarnothi. and i´m willing to bet that there´s quite a story behind why she and her son left sarnoth – and were the kids father is.

Someone said earlier on in the comments that if you look at the page where Dr. Pol is taking about how the sarnothi civil war started we actually see the sar’teri man with his family just before he was killed by the fishermen. His wife and son look suspiciously like Carrie and Ben. On top of that, there is a young girl with them (the daughter I’m guessing) who looks like she could be around Selkie’s age. And yet, this girl was not in Agent Brown’s family photo that he showed Todd.

I tried finding that strip to look at it myself – because that would be so interesting and make so much sense. I’ll keep looking through the archives, but if anyone else finds it, can they post the link here?

For Carrie to be that girl, this would have had to be at least 20 years ago, assuming Sarnothi mature at a similar rate as humans.

Theo and Mari took the kids fishing until it was outlawed – their “yearly family vacation”, and Todd was maybe Selkie´s age when they adopted him, so 18-20 years ago. In order for fishing to become the yearly family vacation, it would have to happen a few years following their first kid, meaning it probably didn´t end more than 15 years ago.

Correct, smaller font and a thinner speech bubble outline are to indicate a soft-spoken voice. Carrie is more quiet-demeanored than other sarnothi (or well, most characters in general) that we’ve seen so far.

He did. Really, this is a language barrier and not an actual speech impediment. When you switch from one language you’ve known and spoken your entire life to another you’ve never spoken before, you’re naturally going to have trouble speaking the language properly, especially when the rules of the language vary drastically from your mother tongue. Even when you do have a good grasp of the language there’s still likely to be pronunciation errors and an obvious accent.

I really like that Dave has added these things into the story because it really helps to show that, even though the Sarnothi people are from North America, their culture and language is as different from ours as the Native Americans or any immigrants from any country whose primary language isn’t English. I’d expect ANY story involving immigrants or non-natives of any sort to show differences in something like a language barrier with obvious mess ups like mispronunciations and bad syntax and grammar. It just makes the story seem more realistic and it shows how varied the people of the world are.

You’re right! How dare Dave show characters that don’t speak flawless English, despite being from a culture whose language doesn’t even remotely resemble English and being a species only superficially and mentally similar to humans.

Nothing wrong with not liking one thing, but when the thing you’re whining about is a quirk of the MAIN CHARACTER, and might be common to ESL speakers of her culture/species, maaaaaybe you should consider other webcomics.

I saw the peach coloured body and green hands and face and guessed that she probably chooses peach or flesh coloured clothing as partial camouflage. If anyone looks at her closely they won’t think she’s human, but if she turns her back and hurries out of the room they won’t see enough to realise there is something odd as her hair is a typical human colour.

Also, one more thing — I recommend changing Carrie’s clothes color. It makes her look like you gave her human skin on her torso and arms and it’s really kind of strange. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks this, but I was first like “wait…was that a mistake? Or is she like…wearing a tan suit trying to look human?”

Many who learn a foreign language as an adult never get past certain difficulties for whatever reason. Especially as someone soft-spoken and perhaps shy, she probably doesn’t practice English very often either aside from with her family, which makes it even more likely that she never develops the instinct that native speakers have.

It’s not just an accent though. It’s a specific grammar and syntax patterns/rules that the Sarnothi have that they’re having trouble dropping. My cousin is the same way–she lives in Alabama and has a Southern accent and everything, but when she’s not paying attention, she’ll slip into Vietnamese grammar patterns. For example, Vietnamese has no plurals. Instead they have qualifiers indicating quanitity. So instead of saying, “I saw cats,” we’ll say “I saw several/three/many cat.” So in English, Vietnamese people speaking English drop the letter S at the end of plurals a lot–kind of the opposite of how Sarnothi speak.

Okay, I *know* I’m totally jumping to conclusions here, but so far their dynamics bother me. She appears really depressed/tired and is doing all the work making dinner while he’s all happy, standing confident and tall and doing nothing helpful. It bothers me, because I’ve seen so much that kind of thing in highly “traditional” (sexist and/or abusive) families. It seems odd given the Sarnothi society seemed to give both sexes equality in work, war, and domestic duties. Very curious to learn this family’s backstory.

Mikael – I agree with you to a degree. I’ve even had to defend myself from some very rude people for choosing to be a stay-at-home parent. However, I’ve met very few women who stay happy in that dynamic—especially after the children leave home. Of course, it’s another thing if the stay-at-home parent has a happy life outside the house—my husband’s grandmother does this very well.

That aside, a family can have gender roles and *still* helpful to one another. My friend’s brother and all his buddies would help out their mom with setting the table, getting food ready, and doing dishes after. It seemed to make dinner (prep and all) much more of a bonding family event.

Then it seems like someone who obviously is suffering from PSTD and is depressed (her posture kind of indicates this) could use an extra hand when undertaking a big chore like making dinner. It might be something she likes doing on her own, but it seems like she’d look a lot happier doing it if that was true.

Of course, I’m reading into a lot of it. I’d like to see more of what their background is.

Also, it’s very telling the little boy is just laying on the couch in the back. He’s Selkie’s age, isn’t he? My kid is the same age. A lot of my parent friends and I would be giving our kids directions to help out with dinner—like clearing off and setting the table and getting out drinks. I’d wonder if it was a Sarnothi thing, but nothing we’ve seen has shown that at all. Sarnothi women seem to share equality with the men. Maybe this is just the way her particular clan works, though, or maybe there’s more to it than that?

I actually don’t think that they’re the same person. The marking on the woman in the story is very wide, covering almost her whole forehead; Carrie’s marking looks much smaller by comparison, as it’s only as wide as the space between her eyes.

I could be wrong, and it could be the different style of the story page, but right now I’m just not feeling it. I really wish her forearms were exposed so we could check her other marks though.

Hopefully we will find out more in the next few comics. Right now I am under the impression that Carrie wants to invite Selkie over for a play date with Benny. It would explain Agent Brown’s comment about Selkie only being eight, since Benny looks to be at least two years older that Selkie.

I know I am. I have seen a number of women in that kind of situation so this is why it is startling to me even though I know there’s probably a lot more to it. Whatever her background is, she immediately looks like a very sad character.

That said, for one thing, some people are quiet or soft-spoken, even in private. This is not necessarily indicative of some sort of relationship problem.

For another, someone feeling withdrawn and vulnerable when thinking about something that makes them uncomfortable—like the potential excitement or disappointment of meeting another of your species and culture when you’ve had very bad experiences and very little contact recently—is not exactly abnormal. Otherwise outgoing people get quiet and withdrawn all the time for a variety of reasons.

And further, there is nothing any more inherently wrong with “traditional” gender roles than notraditional ones, or “reversed” ones, or any other variety, so long as it is a willing choice by all involved. Some people are happy that way, some people aren’t, but as long as it’s a decision you make for yourself and you’re okay with it, a lifestyle is a lifestyle is a lifestyle.

I have a reason for that, but it didn’t make sense to me to mention it at the time of the scene because Avery talking openly in public about his family being sarnothi would break cover story. It also feels off to me that Avery wasn’t shown correcting the behavior at the time, but I frankly didn’t want to dwell on the scene too long. Think of it as a deleted scene.

Basically, Carrie and Benny are more experienced at maintaining the cover story than Selkie and Todd are. They keep the underwater antics to a minimum and primarily swim above water as humans do.

Thanks for the explanation! That makes sense… it did kind of feel like you were rushing through the scene. Several things changed off-stage: Selkie from worried to having fun, lifeguard from scared to protective to jerk, etc.

I never thought of this, but after seeing an adult female, I have a serious question.

So like, Selkie’s people lay eggs, or that’s the idea I was given. So do they have like a cycle, or do they just make a decision to lay eggs? As a preditor, I would imagine the concept of having a period wouldn’t work because of the blood in the water.

Human females menstruate because their pregnancies are much more biologically expensive than in most other species.

A human mother ordinarily can only have one infant at a time, and spends roughly three years per child for pregnancy and nursing, and she has a much higher chance of dying as a consequence of getting pregnant than most species. This is because human children are enormous in size compared to the mother, and much more helpless than most live-born infants. It is also because the high nutrition needs of the human fetal brain puts such a stress on the mother’s body that if the pregnancy were to continue any longer the stress on the mother would be catastrophic – Eclampsia is the result when the mother’s body fails to maintain the homeostasis that she requires, and she goes into convulsions while her blood pressure and blood sugar go up to lethal levels.

Because of the high cost of the pregnancy humans have evolved to miscarry any suspect non-viable infant. The embryonic tissue of a healthy embryo creates a biochemical that prevents this miscarriage. If the embryo fails to produce this biochemical, as happens with several sorts of abnormalities, the mother’s uterus sheds the lining in order to get rid of the embryo as soon as possible. This even happens if there is no pregnancy. Absence of the substance that the embryo and fetus produce results in the uterine lining shedding even when there was no chance of a pregnancy. A menstrual period is the body attempting to miscarry.

This means that Sarnothi would not menstruate. They are not live bearers and the eggs that they lay would not be a life threatening challenge.

In species other than humans a small amount of blood appearing from the genitals is generally a sign of ovulation – that the follicle where the egg ripened ruptured to release the egg and a tiny amount of blood escaped. More often there is no blood. When human’s bleed it indicates that they are infertile. When other mammals bleed it indicates that they are in a fertile period. It’s a sign breeders watch for in livestock as that blood is when they introduce the male.

Adding to that: another reason for menstruation is because we’re in an arms race with our embryos. Human embryos implant much more deeply into the uterine wall than in most animals, and women grew a thicker lining over time as a result, and this kept its back-and-forth positive feedback loop until the lining was too thick to reabsorb every month, so we just started shedding it.